Dental office plans approved in Harleysville

Smile Realty, the real estate division of Weaver, Reckner & Reinhart Associates, received preliminary/final approval July 2 from the Lower Salford Township Board of Supervisors for the dental practice’s plans for its offices at 181 Main St. in Harleysville.

“They’ll tear down the old buildings that are there and put up a new dental office,” Lower Salford Township Manager Joe Czajkowski said.

Weaver, Reckner & Reinhart, which also has another Harleysville office and a Souderton one, bought the Main Street office when it purchased the practice of Dr. Jack Brent, who retired in 2011.

The dental offices are in what was a converted house, Dr. John Reckner testified at a 2012 conditional use hearing for the new plans.

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The planned new office will be similar to the Souderton one and will be more efficient for the patients and employees, Reckner said at the time.

Lower Salford gave the plans preliminary approval last year, but final approval could not be given until the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation approved plans for the driveway, road front improvements and stormwater runoff measures for the roadway, Czajkowski said.

In other matters at the July 2 meeting:

• In a follow-up to the board’s April approval of a zoning change for the planned AG Harleysville project at the intersection of routes 113 and 63, an amendment to a previous stipulation agreement for the site was approved July 2.

“This allows them to build the commercial they’re planning on building,” Czajkowski said.

The stipulation agreement previously was for offices to be built, he said.

The planned development will be on two tracts totaling about 10 acres, with one of the lots on each side of Park Avenue on the Walmart side of Route 113, according to information given in April.

The plans include a Tractor Supply Co. store, bank, restaurant and stores. Land development plans have not yet been submitted. Those plans will have to be reviewed and approved before construction can begin.

• The newly formed Lower Salford Industrial Development Authority, for which the articles of incorporation and first board members were approved in May, was scheduled to have its first meeting, Czajkowski said.

“They actually have an application before them,” Czajkowski said.

The IDA helps industrial projects get funding, Lower Salford Board of Supervisors Chairman Doug Gifford said in May. The IDA does not directly provide money for the projects, but bank loans approved by the IDA are tax free, which allows the banks to charge a lower interest rate on those loans, he said.

Czajkowski said he did not have information about the application that was to be considered by the IDA.